Real Life Fitness – Getting Fit With Brent

P90X is meant to be “extreme” compared to other home workouts systems.  People quit too often because they don’t understand the importance of figuring things out, sticking it out, and following all the steps to achieving success with P90X.

So, I wanted to take a few minutes to write a few simple, easy-to-follow tips for accomplishing your goals with P90X.  NOTE:  This advice can really apply to any exercise/nutrition regiment, but I’ll focus on P90X since that is what I’m currently doing.

1.  Schedule Your Time

The biggest problem run into with doing P90X is running out of time.  The second is not being able to focus on your workout.  Because of these reasons, you must learn to schedule your workout as your time.  No one else gets your time, if at all possible.  This is your time to focus.

So think when you can do your workouts and have 60-90 minutes to devote to doing your daily exercise without interruption.  Yes, this may mean that you need to shift your daily schedule a bit.  For me, I had to become a morning person again.  I started going to be earlier, waking up earlier, and doing my workout before my kids wake up.

Yes, it is sacrifice.  But, if you want results, sometimes you have to make a change.

2.  Follow the diet

P90X is a system.  It’s not just a group of exercises.  It is a combination of eating clean, eating to fuel your body, and eating things that are good for you and taste good.  Doing P90X without the diet is simply not following the system.  If you want results like the people on the infomercial, you have to eat what is on the nutrition plan.

I’m the first to admit that the plan can be hard to follow.  I’ll also be the first to admit that I take cheat meals.  Do I think my results would be drastically different without cheat meals?  Probably not, but I probably would have a bit better results.

3.  If you fall, get back up!

It’s easy to fall off the wagon, either with the nutrition plan or the exercise.  Life comes up.  Stuff gets in the way.  It happens.

DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP!

Simply decide your going to get back up and to it, clean up the nutrition, pop in the DVD, and start exercising again.  If you need to start over, then start over.  Trust me when I say this:  Giving up is not worth it.  You’re worth finishing the 90 days.  Your family is worth you finishing the 90 days.

4.  Supplement

The food we eat simply does not have all the nutrients we need to thrive.  Even fruits and veggies simply do not have the nutritional value that they used to.  With that, invest in supplementing.  I suggest considering the P90X multivitamin and/or Shakeology.

Adding in these extra nutrients will help your body rebuild faster, give you more energy, help you feel better, and help you get the most out of your lifestyle change and your workouts.

So here are my 4 practical tips on having success with P90X.

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I was smart today before my P90X workout:  I remembered to eat a bit of something!  I decided that to push through the entire workout at the intensity I wanted to push I’d need a bit of something on my stomach, and a half a banana seemed to do the trick.

So my Shoulders and Arms workout went quite well.  On many things I was able to either increase weight or increase reps.  On many other things I felt stronger.  I think the low carb lifestyle of the phase 1 diet is not helping the strength and endurance, but hey…it’s only for 2.5 more weeks, right?

Nutrition again was pretty good today.  Tomorrow will be a challenge as I have nothing prepared for lunch quite yet.  Will have to figure something out there when I get up in the morning.  I may be feasting on protein shake, some type of meat we have around here, and veggies!  I did have to eat out tonight (hence the “nothing to take”) but I did well:  Low to moderate amount of straches, lots of veggies, some dairy, and a decent amount of meat (although I wish I had more).

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P90X Plyo X…get your little bucket near by!  At least, that is what I thought I was going to feel like.  Woke up at 5am, had a headache, had a 2 year old trying to make my life miserable from 4:30 until the alarm went off, but really wanted a good push today.

And push I did…while the head was throbbing!

Overall burned nearly 700 calories during the 58 minutes.  My legs took a beating though.  I worked on jumping as much as I could, as high as I could, as cleanly as I could.  And when I landed, the head throbbed.  Not a pleasant feeling at all, but managed it nonetheless.

Diet was nearly spot on today.  I feel good about how it is going, although the lower carb really takes a toll on me.  I’m trying to force myself through it until I can take no more with the 1 starch a day.  For a guy who loves oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat bread, beans, etc, little starch intake can really drag me down.  And I feel it a bit in the workouts.

Tomorrow is Shoulders and Arms.  I’m going to eat half a banana before I begin and see if that helps with the energy to push through the routine.

Brent P90X P90X, p90x nutrition, p90x plyo x, P90X-Diet

Wow, day 8 already.  P90X week 1 went by fast!  Back to push-ups and pull-ups today.  Day 8 of P90X’s Chest and Back workout was INTENSE today.  I learned that I really need to eat half a banana or something before doing this routine.  I was pretty wasted by the end (we did do Ab Ripper first, which probably didn’t help).

Some of my numbers were up, some where down.  It was a mixed bag.  But I felt I pushed harder overall today, focusing a bit more on form, larger weights, wider grip on the pull-up bar, etc.  I’m hoping small changes like this will pay off.

Nutrition was pretty good today.  I did choose to have some desert at lunch, but kept my calorie goals in mind and did not overdo it.  I feel pleased with this weekend overall.  Usually weekends were a massive cheat meal for me (read this as a big burger and fries type of cheat, or pizza), but instead I kept thing in mind, at fairly clean, and feel good about it.

Tomorrow is Plyo day.  Ready to see if I can push myself a bit more tomorrow than what I did last week.

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Wow, 3 nights in a row of horrible sleep and P90X the next morning.  I had gone nearly all summer getting pretty good sleep, and then this.  Not a great way to start a ketosis diet and intense exercise (makes me crave carbs too much).

But, P90X called my name this morning, and I responded.  Did Ab Ripper first, since the legs workout is really intense….or at least, I make it that way.

I posted this on my Twitter and I 100% stick by it:  If you do P90X Legs and Back and you are not shaking towards the end of the workout, you didn’t push hard enough.  I barely had enough gas left in the tank to finish this one out.  Towards the end I could barely muster a pull-up, and the leg work had me nearly collapsing.  Week 1 of P90X again….ahh, gotta love the feeling!

So with one day in week 1 of P90X to go, the only thing I can think of is this:

NEED.  TO.  EAT.  MORE.

I’m already thinking through my grocery list for this next week.  More variety in meats.  More veggies.  More things to eat period.  I want to eat clean and have done 95% well this week.  But, I’m simply not taking in enough, so I have to be willing to eat more.  In particular, I plan on adding more protein shakes in.  Those seem to work well as extra calories that deliver some type of high nutrition.

So I’m putting it out there:  I will eat more!

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My original P90X Diet On A Budget post has been quite popular, so I wanted to put together a follow-up video with some additional thoughts on how to eat the best things you can eat, eat cleanly, and still save money.

With that in mind, I do propose one deviation from the strict nutrition guide, and that is taking in Shakeology as a meal and not just a snack.  I prefer it to be breakfast, although you could do it at any point during the day.  In fact, if you eat out for any meals on this plan, replace where you eat out with Shakeology and you’ll save money and drink something a lot healthier.

Some other things I’ve discovered:

Frozen Chicken Breast Tenderloins – Typically around $8 for 3 pounds.  3 pounds = 16 protein servings at a cost of $0.50 per serving.

Protein drink – Check your calories here!  For instance:  Body Fortress Super Advance Whey Protein is 150 calories, so this would be 1.5 protein servings.  $16 for 23 scoops, or around 34.5 servings at a cost of around $0.46/serving.

Shakeology – $120 for a 30 meal supply (yeah, looks bad, but let me break it down a bit).  $4/meal.  But..think about taking in 2 protein servings ($1 approx) and a carb and other things.  Now, all of the suddent, it doesn’t look so bad.  Also, you can save 10%-25% on this as well, cutting your cost even more.

These are just some ideas to help get you going.

Comments?  Thoughts?  If you’ve found some other things that are affordable, let me know and I’ll revisit this topic again.

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